the problem with cloaks
by Constance Greene
Summary: Riku is such a stubborn bastard sometimes, Zexion learns. Especially when it comes to cloaks — or dresses. — RikuZexion


·· **warning** – some amounts of crack & slight yaoi references.  
··· dedicated to jessica, because who else likes zexiku? ( & we'll have to change that. ) ♥

·· _kay-aych_ ees noot miine.

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**the problem with cloaks (dresses)**;;

_riku × zexion_

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"He's wandering around again," Zexion observed somberly, as if broadcasting this particular piece of news to the men sitting on random odds and ends in the dungeon meant that they actually cared. He shut the door quietly behind him – or as quietly as possible, anyway, since it was composed of heavy steel. The 'he' Zexion was referring to was one they knew very well – and yet, 'he' remained more or less oblivious to their existence ( or lack there of ).

"Bored?" Lexaeus suggested off-handedly, without looking up from his cross-word puzzle. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he leaned over the booklet further, pencil lead scratching on the paper furiously. Vexen shoved the back of his head and snarled, disregarding the large man's attempt to swat at him, and instead retreating to rub the spot where he was hit, deciding to cover up his plans to break the long-haired scientist's arm with the simple grumble of an 'Ow, that hurt.'

"Most likely," He began, seizing a handful of pickled vegetables and squishing them in his grasp with gusto. The juice ran down his black arm sleeve, and the stench of vinegar permeated the air as quick and alarming as a skunk's aroma. It was even more potent in Zexion's sensitive nose, and he felt as if it would bleed – if Nobodies could bleed, that is. "There's nothing else better to do here than chores and eat pickled greens –" He glanced down at his hand. "Why the _hell _are Xigbar's pickles in here?"

The one with ginger-hair shuffled noticeably, glancing back down at his book with a shrug of his massive shoulders. It wasn't his fault that he _liked_ pickled cucumbers, unlike Vexen . . .

A sigh filtered through Zexion's mouth as his eyes slowly slid shut in exasperation. However, his voice was calm and utterly emotionless. "Pickles and pickled cucumbers aren't the same thing, Vexen. You're our world's kind of chemical engineer – you should know that. And I made those." Again – as if they cared.

Promptly, Zexion received a glob of greenish-tinctured goop on the front of his standard Organization XIII uniform as Vexen apparently reached the height of his frustration. _I never should have let him take over my dish-washing duty the night before_, He thought, thinking back at another one of his superior's odd mood swings.

"Hey, Zexion, no problem! I'll take care of it!" Vexen bumped the shorter man away, wrinkled lips pulling into a cheerful smile as he plunged his hands into the water, protected by an extra pair of gloves used specifically for cleaning, and began to scrub a plate vigorously.

"O . . . kay." _Whatever. _He just wanted to get away before Number IV began whistling. Giving him a bemused look, quirked eyebrow included, the silver-haired man edged out of the kitchen.

It must have been then, after minutes of all that washing, Vexen realized that life in the Organization either sucked very badly, or he got upset after breaking a serving plate.

It was really quite a pretty plate.

"That's disgusting," Zexion commented slowly, suppressing the flare of anger that threatened to rise in his guts. With his lip curling in contempt, he flicked the majority of the squashed vegetable off his chest, though unable to rid himself of the slime mark that was left.

Lexaeus suddenly burst into an unexpected round of husky laughs, almost heartily. _As if you have a heart, _Zexion inwardly hissed, glaring at the two through narrowed indigo eyes.

"I'm leaving," He declared, and Vexen waved after him a brief 'Ta-ta!'

▪▪▫▪▪

_Fucking imbeciles, _Zexion thought with distaste as he stalked up the spiral staircase leading towards the first floor of Castle Oblivion, _they're both older than me and yet they still act like idiots half the time. _Hanging around those two could have been embarrassing, if he wasn't so apathetic. Just because he was Xehanort's youngest apprentice, they felt they could get away with picking on him and then turn right around and display countless acts of immaturity. And yet, they still wanted him to cooperate with them – because they knew that they'd be utterly lost and thoroughly helpless without him. He was the only one in the old group that remained relatively focused – the rest kept on going out on their own and getting themselves into a bunch of tangled mess . . .

Well, hell. He'd show them respect. No, he'd _demand_ it. One of these days . . .

_You're sounding like Marluxia. Snap out of it,_ He told himself. Yes, Marluxia, who wanted to seize the entire Organization and be its king. It seemed that they all had their own little plans – which was why Zexion thought it as so _ironic_ that they called themselves an organization.

Well, he had plans of his own. And they were dealing with that Riku . . .

And speak of the devil.

A boy suddenly came into view ahead of the musing Nobody. Zexion stopped walking to watch him carefully, almost as a frequently abused dog would when being approached by a stranger. But the silver-haired teenager was not exactly a stranger to Zexion – all though he never had met him before, Number VI knew his story.

Oh, he knew his story very well.

How he was wandering around the castle at his own liberty, searching for his dear friend, Sora . . . how pathetic. If Riku actually cared that much to find him, he'd keep his head and not try to stray to another interest – Marluxia's sweet blonde-haired, blue-eyed bait.

Before he could debate putting his hood back on or not, Riku spotted him.

"Hey! You!"

If he were Axel, Zexion would persist to correct him on the lack of title immediately. But, he wasn't ( somehow to his relief ). Nevertheless, that did not stave off the involuntary wince that shuddered through his body at being indicated to as roughly as 'you.'

"Ah, Riku. How convenient – I've been looking for you." The corner of his lips twitched into what may have been a smirk, but faltered mid-way, dreading that the boy from Destiny Islands would take it the wrong way.

He might have; Zexion had no way in knowing. He could distinguish the scents of people from one another, and even morph into them ( the people, not the smells ), but not read other's minds. However, a platinum brow did rise smoothly in what he first assumed was in questioning of his statement. He quickly learned it was not that.

"Why do you have snot on your dress?"

This seemed to ruffle Zexion's composure. The slightest shift of his trim body beneath his _cloak_, taken aback by Riku's blunt and unforeseen comment, occurred in just a mere second.

". . . Pardon?"

The boy raised a shoulder in a shrugging gesture. "Snot. Boogers. Green gooey stuff." He waved his hand in the direction of his black-cloaked chest. "On your dress."

Now Zexion's brows rose ( both, though ) in response to Riku's explanation. This kid was . . . worse than Sora, he was sour to say. "First off, it is not a dress. It's a cloak. And, there aren't any _boogers_ on it," He cringed at using the immature word, "but pickle juice." How embarrassing.

"How do you know?"

Slow blink. "Because I watched them being thrown at me."

"How do you know _that_?"

Persistent little—! "I am not _delusional_! I can smell it. Pickle juice. Not boogers."

Riku crossed his arms across his chest and smirked. "Right."

"You don't believe me."

"Naturally, no."

Zexion let his shoulders fall in a sigh. Arguing was proven to be futile. Then he glared at Riku, levelling himself with those icy cerulean eyes of a snow leopard, and in a flash they were ripped away from his vision as the boy doubled back and dashed around a corner.

If he had feelings, he'd say he was infuriated. Since he didn't, he was on the borderline of that extreme. Zexion had never been one for heated arguments, or pointless ones – he always kept his composure. _Always. _He was the great manipulator, the puppet master. He should have seduced Riku with his calming lies and temptations right away instead of stalling like that and letting the boy get to him.

So _what happened_? Why couldn't he reign over his mind and knead it into a mush of useless dough instantaneously, like he could with so many others?

_Boogers, _He thought with dumbstruck disbelief, and shook his head.

▪▪▫▪▪

He tried to convince himself that he didn't need help; that he never asked help from anybody. He worked things out alone. Hell, he was entitled. His mind could handle multiple jobs at once.

But as he continued to puzzle over ( meaningless ) things, Zexion found himself drifting further and further towards outside aid . . . which happened to be Xigbar.

No, he didn't trust going back down to the basement for a while. Those idiots would just give him more of a hard time. Xigbar, at least, didn't discriminate.

"Well, if you wanna know what _I _think," The Nobody with an eye patch slung across one side of his face said, taking a healthy bite out of a spring green apple, "that kid's deranged. You should stay away from him, Zexion."

_Didn't discriminate, eh?_ He let a brief puff of air be forced out of his nostrils in discern. "It isn't as though he's dangerous." If he had been able to be possessed by their Superior's Heartless, then why couldn't _he _do the same?

"You're right. 'Cause he doesn't have one of _these_," He announced, hoisting his gun-like weapon up for show.

"Please, put the weapon down, Xigbar."

"As _if_," He muttered under his growling breath, rolling his one eye but obeying nonetheless.

"What I don't understand," He began, sliding forward in the rather uncomfortable wooden chair and clutching either side of his face with his gloved hands, letting his hair fall before him like a layered curtain, "is why I couldn't control him instantly. It was like . . . his soul was unattainable."

Xigbar's nose crinkled a bit. "Yeah, that's because he still reeks of the darkness."

"I don't see how . . ."

Number II put his hand up to stop him – which happened to be the one with an apple in its grasp, so for a brief and ridiculous moment Zexion thought he was offering for him to take a bite of it. "Listen. If you see him again, wandering about – try again. He won't be going anywhere, anytime soon." In an instant, he was at the silver-haired Nobody's side, just a blur of gravitational speed. His hand rested in what he probably thought was a comforting way on his shoulder. His sagging mouth pulled upwards at the side, giving him a leer as his amber eye glinted maliciously. "That's the treasure of this place. It's like a prison."

"Riku hates prisons," He murmured between half-closed lips as he rose, slipping out of Xigbar's reach, and summoned up a portal without looking back.

▪▪▫▪▪

It was three days later until he encountered Riku again.

Lingering by the closed doorway of a certain Organization XIII member's bedroom, he appeared to be debating whether or not it'd be a good idea ( or a _smart_ idea, more like it ) to unlock it with his keyblade.

He turned his head in Zexion's direction, probably when he heard the heavy leather footsteps on the metallic foundation, and though showed no hints of being startled, opened his mouth to speak. "I saw one of you guys in the dresses go into this room yesterday. The girl. She's the only one whose outfit makes sense in this place," Was his excuse.

This nearly struck Zexion as funny. "You were planning to spy on Larxene while she was getting undressed?" His brow quirked, mistrusting Riku's intentions.

"Scheming is more like it." He flashed him another damnable wicked smile and folded his arms over his well-toned chest.

Going off of what he witnessed earlier – the hesitation at the closed, foreboding white door – the black-clad figure leaned in closer to the one in his island attire. "Then what's stopping you, O Keyblade Master?" He invoked, tone softly taunting.

A frown quickly creased his lips, but instead of getting irrationally angry, Riku's temper seemed to tamper off almost pathetically. "I'm not that. Sora is." He muttered, glowering beneath a curved line of ebony lashes at the floor, away from Zexion.

He seized the chance and prodded further with his antics. "Oh? Does that disappoint you?"

All though his voice was a quiet undertone, the Organization member saw that one of his hands – the one free of Souleater – was balled tightly into a fist. "Shut up, dress boy."

Uninflected by this discouraging nickname this time around – he hoped he was developing an immunity to them – Zexion withdrew and said nothing. Riku had turned his back on him again; an unwise choice for his enemies, but he supposed Riku was an exception. Riku probably thought he was an exception, too, since he strode around Castle Oblivion acting as if he owned the place and breaking into rooms. In truth, Zexion didn't know _what_ he was.

_A pain in the ass, that's a start, _He thought.

Riku further continued to harmlessly examine the door. It made Zexion wonder what he was waiting for. _Do you want to appreciate the lack of designs or are you trying to stare at anything but me? _Of course, Zexion somehow felt the same way – as if he needed to look away for a moment in order to regain himself. But his cobalt eyes were locked on the back of the boy's head, mimicking the stubbornness that radiated from his (whole) body, _appreciating_ the shine it gave off despite the fact that the entire castle was coated in a similar sheen.

If it was another member of the Order he was talking to, he would wait for them to say something until he replied. But, intrigued by the keyblade wielder's actions ( or lack there of ), he asked another question that he hoped would be answered, no matter how pointless it was or how bitchy the reply sounded.

"Do you suppose that I'll bail you out if you get caught?"

"Who the hell's stopping me?" He whirled on him once more, a surprisingly graceful movement for someone that should be going through the awkward stage in his life. Cold and unforgiving cerulean eyes narrowed, seeming to accuse him of all his past crimes and sins. "You sure aren't."

Keeping calm was the key. Letting his voice diminish, Zexion was inwardly pleased by Riku's anger. It was his turn, now. The Cloaked Schemer fed off of the emotion, the weakness giving him renewed strength. "No," He purred, exceedingly attractive with his deep, enigmatic rumble of a voice.

Riku didn't appear to be fazed. Instead, he kept on going.

"I could take you down," He threatened.

_Could you? Is your heart really recovered enough to do so? _Zexion doubted that. Riku probably only assumed he could because he was much too headstrong for his own good, and that he hadn't yet faced this potential opponent. If he didn't know what his weapon was, how could he bring him harm? _Wrong, Riku. Wrong._

But Zexion was done with stating the truths mixed in with lies. Satisfied by the lack of answer ( most likely taking his silence as consent ), Riku proceeded on finally accomplishing his task by opening the door. He tapped the jagged tip of the keyblade to the lock three times, and an audible _click_ resounded through the vacant metallic hallway as the door opened. He pushed it open further lightly with the back of his hand, peering into the dim room. Then he ducked into the doorway and was gone, a smudge of inky blackness far back in the bedroom.

And what did Zexion intend to do – to stand there and keep watch, or go back and tell someone? He found himself rapidly succumbing to the idea of entering in after Riku – he supposed he should be there to witness Larxene rip his throat out, at any rate.

He slid into the shadows and saw that Riku was waiting for him. He stood in the center of the room, alone.

"No one here," Zexion murmured into the capacious space, eyeing one of the walls suspiciously.

"Nope. It's empty." Riku took a seat on the bed, bouncing gently as he did so. The other saw this as painfully human, painfully boyish, and painfully unnoticed so that he thought he felt a pang of something where his heart should have been. Instead there was only empty space, just like the dark room.

"Are you sad?" He pried despite himself, internally working furiously to try and figure out this complex and oftentimes unpredictable teenager. _What makes you tick? Just what the hell keeps you from committing suicide on the spot with all the things that you've done_? He thought he knew the answer, but wasn't so sure anymore. That sent him into a kind of emotionless turmoil.

Riku only seemed slightly perturbed by this question. He supposed that he got enough similar cross-examinations back at home, equally without sturdy roots, from Sora. "No. I didn't expect anyone to be in here in the first place."

If this caught Zexion off-guard, he tried desperately not to show it with his distant expression. "Then why . . ."

A grin lapsed onto the boy's pale face. "Because you're a total sap; that's why."

Now his façade fell at the dawning realization marked by his chiding remark. He had been tricked by a boy of fifteen and a half, lured into a room without his consent. He. Zexion. The infamous manipulator that resided in Organization XIII.

Now he stared at this imposter, his eyes blue-tinted smoldering embers from a very, very hot fire.

"I wanted to talk to you," He continued bluntly, though the hints of a smirk still pulled at the corner of his lips, as if he thought that this was all very funny, and he, very clever.

The older male let out a sigh, one that he hoped was not in defeat. Not quite yet. "What shall we talk about?"

"Your name would be a start. What is it?"

"Zexion," He replied edgily.

"So, Zexion. Where's Sora?"

"Wouldn't you rather want to know of Naminé's location?" Tempted Zexion, trying to get ahead of the race again.

Riku shook his head – it sent his silver strands of hair to flow around his face like quicksilver. "No. I just want to know where Sora is."

Zexion settled back on the heels of his boots, arms settling against his chest in an almost defensive ( yet somewhat relaxed ) way. "Then I won't answer."

This wasn't the kind of answer Riku wanted to receive, he knew. That's why he had said it. He left the boy frowning and suffering in his silence on the bed, forehead lowered to stare at his hands dangling between his knees. He stayed that way for some time. Zexion assumed he was debating how to come up with a different approach, but as the saying went, 'assume makes an ass out of you and me.' He was still frustrated with the fact that he couldn't tell what he was thinking.

Finally, after what could have been minutes, Riku piped up.

"So . . . you've got pants under that dress?" He began slowly, and Zexion was shocked into seeing that the boy was now staring at him with an unreadable expression, his face like marble.

_Preposterous_, he thought with a sour grimace. _Just what are you planning to do, Riku? _Was he just making a fool of himself or would this actually amount to something in the future?

"Of course," He responded, biting off the words.

Riku kicked his legs slightly off of the bed, pushing his weight off of it with his burly arms. He took a few steps towards him, that same knowing grin on his face. "Let me see."

"_Why_?"

"I don't believe you." _Again._

_You shouldn't believe anything else that I say, but trust me on this one, _Zexion wanted to get out but couldn't utter anything as coherent as that. His tongue was stuck, as though glued to the roof of his mouth, and all he could do was protest in the simplest of ways: strangled sounds, offensive body language, and a whole lot of sputtered fussing.

It was when he couldn't summon a portal and get the heck out of there that Riku suddenly tackled him onto the bed, grabbing his narrow waist and the middle of his back to spin him around like a dancing pair. As he did so, he murmured into his ear, "You know, you're really small." It was true, something Zexion hadn't realized before – he was only a few inches taller than the teen.

Now he was forced rather _rudely_ back onto the bed, Riku's partially gloved hands fumbling on his lower body and touching places he really _shouldn't_ to try and lift his cloak up. After a spitting hiss ejaculated from Zexion's mouth, twisted in a grimace, he succeeded – to reveal perfectly normal black pants beneath the cloak.

"_Never_ do that again," He ordered, his voice a quiet, beautiful snarl of distress. Mainly it was because he found himself wishing that Riku'd go against his words once more and ignore him further. _Get those thoughts out of your head, Zexion._ He seemed to hear the silver-haired boy's cheerfully smug voice inside his head, and was at once alerted of his overpowering scent at such close proximities, with Riku on his hands and knees above him. Darkness was first, overlaying everything else. But there was more. The faint musk of earth and sea and salt and paopu –

He placed his hand firmly on the boy's stone chest and shoved him off, lips still formed into a growl. His bangs were a splayed mess in front of his face, but it wasn't like he was ever bothered by them. What _did _bother him was the soft-smelling fragrance of Riku's silken hair as it brushed against his skin, tickling his nose and cheeks and lips.

He created a pathway quick enough so that Riku couldn't follow him, and didn't linger in the Realm of Darkness for long.

▪▪▫▪▪

Back in the basement again.

Zexion sat with his elbow resting on his thigh, propping his chin up with the side of his hand. He stared at Vexen and Lexaeus boredly as they squabbled over who did dish-washing duty next.

"Will you two please stop," He droned, barely even looking at them anymore and glancing narrowly at a poster on one of the walls that told what chores were assigned to them that week.

Vexen lowered his hands, which had been raised in fists and shaking animatedly at Lexaeus in order to notice the violet-haired individual. "You seem more lifeless than usual, Zexion. I think," He began, and for what Zexion dreaded was another one of his useless rants, "after I start experimenting with that Riku, you'll be able to have more fun."

He blinked. "Vexen, you wouldn't know how to experiment with him at all."

"What?"

Lexaeus watched Zexion as he zoned out again, tossing a cleaning cloth from one hand to another. "I don't think you want to know, Vexen."

Zexion hardly heard them as Vexen prattled off to Lexaeus in the corner, but Lexaeus wouldn't budge for him out of loyalty. He had something – _someone_ – else on his mind.

Riku was wandering around again, and Zexion could smell darkness and earth and sea and salt and paopu from ( what seemed like ) miles away.

It was an aroma as good as any.


End file.
